The present invention generally relates to printing. More specifically, the present invention relates to substituting user-selectable fonts in a printing device to facilitate a print task.
A user in a printing environment has access to multiple printing devices. The printing devices include, but are not limited to, printer, digital copier, facsimile unit and multi-function machine (scanner/copier/printer). To facilitate the printing it is sometimes necessary to perform font substitution when an electronic document is sent to a printer with a PDL requirement for a particular font which has not been loaded into the target printer or its spooler or server. So another font is automatically substituted in some cases before printing. Fonts may include a set of glyphs, each of which may represent the shape of various characters (e.g., graphemes, numerals, symbols, and/or punctuation marks). Fonts may have different styles, which may be reflected in the shape of each font's constituent glyphs. The style of a particular glyph is typically similar to the style of another glyph of the same font.
Typically, fonts, i.e., a font set and its associated algorithms, are licensed for use by one printing device. Therefore, when that printing device requires the use of a particular licensed font, the printing device accesses the font set so that raster bits corresponding to the desired font raster bits can be produced. If a user desires to print a particular font using a printing device that does not have access to the font set, a page description language (PDL) associated with the printing device typically will perform a font substitution. In particular, the PDL can enable another font, e.g., a font that possesses similar characteristics to the unavailable font, to be printed in place of the requested font. Problematically, however, a font substitution operation typically does not provide a document with printed information that directly corresponds to the document that a user intended to print causing the print output to be skewed. Font substitution increases the potential that a user may end up with print output that is of poor quality causing print waste and frustration with the system and device from which the job was printed.
Based on the foregoing, it should be appreciated that there is a need for improved systems and methods that address the aforementioned and/or other shortcomings of the prior art.